Pak Yeong-hun

    Keywords: People

Korean 9 dan professional. Born 1st April 1985.

Promoted to 9 dan in July 2004 for his victory in the international Fujitsu Cup tournament.

wchen: Is he the youngest to achieve 9d?

Helger: Seems so. Yi Se-tol was 20, and Yi Ch'ang-ho was 21.

Anon: Go4Go reports that he is the youngest Korean 9p, suggesting another country might have had younger.

Scryer: Not Japan, apparently: [ext] American Go E-Journal reported a year ago that Cho U (Taiwan) would become the youngest Japanese 9d in history after winning the Honinbo title at age 23. GoBase shows no Chinese pros that young.

YY: Park is the youngest to achieve "professional" 9 dan. He was promoted rapidly in the span of a year for the total of 5 dan -- qualifying wins (1 dan promotion), a finalist in the Samsung Open (1 dan promotion) and a winner of the Fujitsu (3 dan promotion for winning a major world title according to the revised Korean rules). Everyone thought Choi CheolHan 8 dan, who beat Lee ChangHo twice in the challenging series (or matches) for Kuksu and KiSeong this year, would be the youngest 9 dan as he has been doing alright in the preliminaries for other world and Korean titles. It is somewhat ironic that Park, who is of same age as (thus a fierce rival to) Choi, yet was generally regarded as an inferior one in the rivarly, surpassed Choi in that regard. One must admit, however, that Lee ChangHo would have been 9 dan when he was 16, had the revised rules been applied back then. Perhaps, 19 for Lee SeDol.

Chinese players may have a better chance in future to beat the record of being the youngest 9 dan as one of their rules for promotion is that a major world title holder is to be promoted to 9 dan automatically regardless of his current dan status.

Park's 9 dan attainment involves another record. It took him only 5 years and 4 months to reach the level of "Entering God" (a formal name for 9 dan meaning "reaching the level of God"). Under the revised Korean rules, it would have taken Lee ChangHo less than 5 years. But, it is not very conceivable now for anyone including Chinese players, to reach the level so quickly from the moment of turning pro as competitions are fiercer with the waves of great younger players.

Oddly, it took Park so long to be qualified to be a professional. He forefeited his studies as a formal Go academy student (YeonGooSeng?) -- he seemed to have disliked the structured life of formal academy students -- which meant less opportunities and thus took longer to be a pro. When he successfully turned pro at the 9th trial, he was already quite mature in terms of both skill and mental strength after so many amateur competitions, which I suspect was why it did not take him so long to win a Korean title and left an impression at Nongshim Cup. While it usually takes 4 to 5 years after turning pro to win a major Korean title, Park did it in less than 3 years. So, if he stuck as a formal Go academy student and thus turned pro earlier, it would have taken a bit longer than 5 years and 4 months to reach 9 dan. Just a groundless conjecture as we have no way of knowing how he would have turned out, had he turned pro earlier. :o)

YY?: A couple of corrections. It took Park only 4 years and 7 months to attain 9d, which is the fastest promotion as far as professionals are concerned. My assertion of 5 years and 4 months above is wrong. It would have taken Yi ChangHo? slightly less than 5 years, and I think it would have taken Yi longer than 4 years and 7 months. Sorry about the mistakes.

One more thing. Ma Xiaochun of China also attained 9d when he was 19 (I am not sure if he was younger than Park), but it was not a true professional rank since there was no true professional system at all back then in China as far as I know. They can argue for Ma Xiachun or someone eles' record. However, so great as Ma was, it is hard to give it credits as the competitions with amateurs "seriously" boosted the promotion. Nevertheless, in order to avoid any confusion, I changed Park's attainment of 9d as the fastest "professional" promotion. (In my opinion, Ma in his prime was the greatest Chinese player, better than Nie Weiping in his prime. It is so sad that Ma has faded away so quickly after the series of defeats by Yi ChangHo?. I wonder how others think of Ma. Well, who do you think was or is the greatest Chinese player?)


This is a copy of the living page "Pak Yeong-hun" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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